Page images
PDF
EPUB

becoming a real and sensible lover. I was aware that when she got to that gay place Woolwich, the house of her father and mother, necessarily visited by numerous persons not the most select, might become unpleasant to her, and I did not like, besides, that she should continue to work hard. I had saved one hundred and fifty guineas, the earnings of my early hours in writing for the paymaster, the quartermaster, and others, in addition to the savings of my own pay. I sent her all my money before she sailed, and wrote to her to beg of her if she found her home uncomfortable to hire a lodging with respectable people, and, at any rate, not to spare the money by any means, but to buy herself good clothes and to live without hard work until I arrived in England; and I, in order to induce her to lay out the money, told her that I should get plenty more before I came home.

We were kept abroad two years later than our time, Mr. Pitt-England not being then so tame as she is now-having knocked up a dust with Spain about Nootka Sound. Oh how I cursed Nootka Sound! and poor bawling Pitt too, I am afraid. At the end of four years, however, home I came, landed at Portsmouth and got my discharge from the army by the great kindness of poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was then the major of my regiment. I found my little girl a servant-of-all-work-and hard work it was in the house of a Captain Brisac, and without hardly saying a word about the matter she put into my hands the whole of my one hundred and fifty guineas unbroken. Need I tell the reader what my feelings were? Need I tell kind-hearted English parents what effect this anecdote must have

produced on the minds of our children? Need I attempt to describe what effect this example ought to have on every young woman who shall do me the honor to read this book? Admiration of her conduct and selfgratulation on this indubitable proof of the soundness of my own judgment were now added to my love of her beautiful person.

Now, I do not say that there are not many young women of this country who would, under similar circumstances, have acted as my wife did in this case; on the contrary, I hope, and sincerely do believe, that there are. But when her age is considered; when we reflect that she was living in a place crowded—literally crowded—with gaylydressed and handsome young men, many of whom really were far richer and in higher rank than I was and scores of them ready to offer her their hand; when we reflect that she was living amongst young women who put upon their backs every shilling that they could come at; when we see her keeping the bag of gold untouched and working hard to provide herself with but mere necessary apparel, and doing all this while she was passing from fourteen to eighteen years of age; when we view the whole of the circumstances, we must say that here is an example which, while it reflects honor on her sex, ought to have weight with every young woman whose eyes or ears this relation shall reach.

HIS RESIDENCE IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNA., IN THE OLDEN TIME.

Never in my whole life did I live in a house so clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk or slept or dressed in a manner so perfectly to my taste, as I did

arms.

then. I had a great deal of business to attend to that took me a great part of the day from home; but whenever I could spare a minute from business, the child was in my I rendered the mother's labor as light as I could; any bit of food satisfied me. When watching was necessary, we shared it between us; that famous grammar for teaching French people English-which has been for thirty years, and still is, the great work of the kind throughout all America and in every nation in Europe-was written by me in hours not employed in business, and in great part during my share of the nightwatchings over a sick, and then only, child, who, after lingering many months, died in my arms. This was the way that we went on; this was the way that we began our married life.

WILLIAM COBBETT.

DEDICATION OF THE DREAM.”

Ο

TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND.

| To thee, whose friendship kept its equal truth Through the most dreary hour of my embittered youth,

I dedicate the lay. Ah! never bard

Nor wandering harper, lonely and ill-starred, In days when Poverty was twin with Song, Cheered by some castle's chief and har bored long,

Not Scott's Last Minstrel in his trembling lays,

Woke with a warmer heart the earnest meed of praise.

For easy are the alms the rich man spares
To sons of Genius by misfortune bent,
But thou gavest me what woman seldom
dares-

Belief, in spite of many a cold dissent, When, slandered and maligned, I stood apart From those whose bounded power hath wrung, not crushed, my heart.

NCE more, my harp, once more! Al- Then, then, when cowards lied away my though I thought

Never to wake thy silent strings again,

A soothing dream thy gentle chords have

wrought,

And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt

in pain,

Soars like a wild bird from a cypress-bough Into the poet's heaven, and leaves dull grief

below.

And unto thee, the beautiful and pure,

Whose lot is cast amid that busy world Where only sluggish Dulness dwells secure

And Fancy's generous wing is faintly furled,

name

And scoffed to see me feebly stem the tide, When some were kind on whom I had no

claim,

And some forsook on whom my love relied, And some who might have battled for my sake

Stood off in doubt to see what turn "the world" would take,

Thou gavest me that the poor do give the

poor

Kind words and holy wishes and true

tears;

[blocks in formation]

To thee the sad denial still held true,

[blocks in formation]

We all within our graves shall sleep,
A hundred years to come;
No living soul for us will weep,

A hundred years to come.

But other men our land will till,

For from thine own good thoughts thy heart And others then our streets will fill,

its mercy drew.

And though my faint and tributary rhymes Add nothing to the glory of thy day,

And other words will sing as gay,
And bright the sunshine as to-day,
A hundred years to come.

WILLIAM GOLDSMITH BRown,

WHAT IS POETRY?

[graphic]

FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

UNDERSTAND by poetry
that mode of expression or
averment that lifts the soul
above the region of mere
sense-which reaches beyond
the merely physical or me-
chanical aspects of the truth
affirmed and apprehends that
truth in its universal charac-
ter and all-pervading rela-
tions, so that our own na-
tures are exalted or purified

by its contemplation.

For instance, I affirm that the creation was a wondrous, beneficent work which all intelligent moral beings cognizant thereof must have regarded with admiration, but that the plans and purposes of God are entirely above the comprehension of man: that is plain prose. Now let us see a poetic statement of that same truth, and mark its immensely superior vividness and force:

Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind, and said,
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding!

Who hath laid the measures thereof? If thou knowest?
Or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?
Or who laid the corner-stone thereof,

When the morning stars sang together,

And all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

Or I am impelled to observe that the creations of the mind, unlike all corporeal existences, are essentially indestructible, and

so fitted to abide and exert influence for ever: that is a prosaic statement of an obvious fact. Let us note how Byron presents it in poetry:

"The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray;
And more beloved existence-that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life in this our state
Of mortal bondage-by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces, what we hate,
Watering the hearts whose early flowers have died,
And with a greener growth replenishing the void."

Or I observe that the midnight thunder during a violent summer tempest is echoed from mountain-top to mountain-top, forming a chorus of awful sublimity; but the poet seizes the thought and fuses it in the glowing alembic of his numbers thus:

"Far along,

From crag to crag, the rattling peaks among,
Leaps the live thunder-not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue;

And Jura answers, through his misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, that call to her aloud."

Such instances speak more clearly than the plainest or the sublest definitions. They show that to the poetic conception Nature is no huge aggregation of senseless matter warmed into fitful vitality by sunbeams only to die and be resolved into its elements, but a living, conscious, vital universe quivering with deathless aspiration because animated by the breath of God.

Nor must we regard poetry merely as an intellectual achievement—a trophy of human genius, an utterance from the heart of Nature fitted to solace its votaries and strengthen them for the battle of life. Poetry is essentially, inevitably, the friend of virtue and merit, the foe of oppression and wrong, the champion of justice and freedom. Wherever the good suffer from the machinations and malevolence of the evil, wherever vice riots or corruption festers or tyranny afflicts and degrades, there Poetry is heard as an accusing angel, and her breath sounds the trump of impending doom. She cannot be suborned nor perverted to the service of the powers of darkness: a Dante or a Körner lured or bribed to sing the praises of a despot or glorify the achievements of an Alva or a Cortes could only stammer out feeble, halting stanzas, which mankind would first despise, then compassionately forget. But to the patriot in his exile, the slave in his unjust bondage, the martyr at the stake, the voice of Poetry comes freighted with hope and cheer, giving assurance that, while evil is but for a moment, good is for ever and ever; that all the forces of the universe are at last on the side of justice; that the seeming triumphs of iniquity are but a mirage divinely permitted to test our virtue and our faith; and that all things work together to fulfil the counsels and establish the kingdom of the all-seeing and omnipotent God.

[ocr errors][merged small]

HORACE GREELEY.

O the disgrace of men, it is seen that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it is happened.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

DUTY OF A MINORITY IN A STATE OF WAR.

FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 25, 1814.

OW far the minority, in a state of war,

HOW

may justly oppose the measures of government is a question of the greatest delicacy. On the one side, an honest man, if he believe the war to be unjust or unwise, will not disavow his opinion. But, on the other hand, an upright citizen will do no act, whatever he may think of the war, to put his country in the power of the of the enemy. It is this double aspect of the subject which indicates the course that reason approves. Among ourselves, at home, we may contend; but, whatever may be requisite to give the reputation and arms of the republic a superiority over its enemy, it is the duty of allthe minority no less than the majority-to support. Like the system of our State and general governments-within they are many, to the world but one--so it ought to be with parties: among ourselves we may divide, but in relation to other nations there ought to be only the American people. In some cases it may possibly be doubtful, even to the most conscientious, how to act. This is one of the misfortunes of differing from the rest of the community on the subject of war. Government can command the arm and hand, the bone and muscle, of the nation; but these are powerless, nerveless, without the concurring good wishes of the community. He who, in estimating the strength of a people, looks only to their numbers and physical force, leaves out of the reckoning the most material elements of powerunion and zeal. Without these the former

« PreviousContinue »